What is the Keitai Tamagotchi?

Bandai recently released a new Tamagotchi pet called the Shuku Keitai Kaitsuu Tamagotchi Plus (Keitai Tamagotchi for short). This new Tamagotchi offers the ability to communicate with Japanese cell phones via an infrared connection. Japanese cell phones? Right! This new Tamagotchi is currently only available in Japan. The cell phone connection allows the Keitai Tamagotchi to shop for items and send your Tamagotchi on a vacation. In addition to the new interface, the Shuku Keitai Kaitsuu Tamagotchi Plus also offers new characters, games, foods, animations and a points system for purchasing items. You can purchase the Keitai Tamagotchi at Japanese importers (like YesAsia) or on Ebay. Unfortunately, Tamagotchi fans outside of Japan can not take full advantage of all of the features of the Keitai Tamagotchi. However, we can still play with everything but the cell phone features. The folks at TamaTalk have started a petition for Bandai to release the Keitai Tamagotchi outside of Japan. You can also read a user review of the Keitai Tamagotchi.